In a blow to NATO, a mere eight years into its three-year overhaul, and after sinking in its dry dock, going on fire, having a crane fall on it, losing its entire crew to facilitate an illegal invasion, having most of its reconstruction materials embezzled and going on fire again, Russian media is suggesting that strategic rust reserve and occasional environmental disaster Admiral Kuznetsov might not be returning to "service" after all...
You'll love this. It's not supposed to be used for years on end to host a carrier, so it was getting on in age.
It was used for years because Russians don't actually have a dock big enough to host the Carrier, they were all in Ukraine.
Then, one day, the new shift found that the extra diesel for the generators, that pump out the water from the dock, was missing. Old age and no pumps meant it sank very quickly.
Why no diesel? The manager was selling the extra for money.
@DrHyde @DreadShips
The dry dock in question had quite the chequered history itself.
Looks new in that pic which means... it always smoked that much?
@darkling @DreadShips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazut
Soviet warship steam plants were designed for cheap fuel.
@DreadShips iirc, she has a sister ship currently living her best life in the Indian Navy, she's not the only ship of her class.
A quick search shows I was incorrect, her sister ship was the Varyag, and was sold incomplete to China, who finished her. So...Yeah, I guess that counts as the only completed ship of her class as her half sister completely outclasses her.
As in, it became a functional ship in the Chinese navy
@TeflonTrout I believe the reviews from the Chinese were... mixed.
It gave them a head start on working out how to actually run carrier ops within Chinese naval doctrine, but was perhaps most useful as a "here's quite a few things to improve..."
It could be they were just following the rich tradition of receiving, copying, then improving Soviet designs. Seems like more than a few Chinese weapons trace their lineage either to or through the USSR
@TeflonTrout @DreadShips Surely very possible. But I’d suspect a twin-track approach of keeping older party members happy with the Soviet tradition they were familiar with, in parallel with building up the upcoming considerable Chinese talent to supersede it.
Nobody wants to repeat the embarrassing Soviet slavish copying of the mistakes in Western designs.
@TeflonTrout @DreadShips Rereading that, I wouldn’t want to imply that Soviet designs were all awful, when the management were not involved, they could be terrific, especially considering the lack of integrated ic tech.
eg a lot of Soyuz hardware, such as:
*gentle gasp* A map in Kerbal Navball form!
It is very impressive looking!
I'm not going to be more specific about what that impression is, beyond mentioning "Jimmy Durante".
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